Sculptor Stephen Hendee has transformed the basement gallery of the Laguna Art Museum into a grotto of unearthly delights. Using rolls of electrical tape, dozens of sheets of inexpensive foamcore board, some fluorescent tubes, a few spotlights and hefty doses of imaginative wit, he's made a notoriously inhospitable space into something oddly inviting--even strangely comforting. Hendee, 33, was born in Santa Monica and raised in Irvine, and he lives in Newark, N.J.

As a sign of the state's increased interest in mobile home parks, a legislative aide toured an Anaheim park this month and said she found conditions in the rented homes appalling. "These are conditions that no person should have to live in," said Carina Franck, a field representative for state Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana). Now the state Department of Housing and Community Development and the city of Anaheim have scheduled an inspection for Jan. 12.

Homeowners who experience damage to their residence that's dangerous often have to wade through a bureaucracy that takes up to three months for a loan to begin repairs. So Simi Valley officials have suggested changing the law to give the city manager the power to approve emergency homeowner repair loans. City Council members will talk about the proposal at their meeting tonight.

Roughly 42 million Americans live paycheck to paycheck, or so says a recent survey commissioned by Automatic Data Processing, a New York-based payroll service. If one paycheck were late, 60% of respondents said they'd have to cut back on at least one important household expense such as buying groceries or paying rent or utility bills, the survey found.

Hammers with smaller handles. Lightweight electric saws. Gloves with reinforced fingertips. These products and others are coming soon to a hardware store near you--and they're made specifically for women. Bowing to the growing number of women tackling home repair and improvement projects themselves, hardware companies and home centers are changing what they sell and how they sell it.

When contractors arrived at her home six years ago, they told Thelma Franks not to worry. Their saws and sledgehammers were to knock out cabinets, not walls. But when Franks returned from a doctor's visit with her ailing husband, two walls had been razed and the toilets taken out. That was the beginning of the couple's star-crossed involvement with a county-sponsored program to rehabilitate low-income housing.

With the city witnessing a major increase in reports of hate crimes, officials have announced a plan to offer aid and comfort to victims of such crimes and make San Diego "off-limits for hate and bigotry."

Two wood finishes promoted as protection against mildew turned out to foster the spread of the ugly fungus, according to a lawsuit filed in Washington against the Santa Ana manufacturer. The lawsuit, which was disclosed recently, said mildew appeared within a few months after customers applied the wood finishes made by Behr Process Corp. The finishes--Super Liquid Raw-Hide and Natural Seal Plus--were billed as preventing mildew for several years, according to the suit.

Once again Orange County government has learned the hard way of the need to keep an eye on the money. The county, meaning the taxpayers, is likely to have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps millions, to fix up housing where work was done poorly. Supervisor Todd Spitzer has made the problems in the Housing and Community Development department program a special concern. He should be receiving more support on this matter. County officials have been too quiet in addressing the abuses.

Residents say something smells to high heaven along their street in West Los Angeles. And, no, it's not just the stench from sewer pipes that keep cracking open with unpleasant regularity on Bentley Avenue. What's so offensive to homeowners is the city's response to the problem of municipally owned trees whose roots are crushing the sewer lines. The city refuses to repair the pipes and in general will not let property owners chop down the offending ficus trees, residents say.